Alice v3.0 is being rewritten from scratch and will be "Java under the hood," meaning that your Alice program will "dump" a Java program that then executes in a Java virtual machine. With this great a difference, we do not plan to make Alice v3.0 "backward compatible"

Are there any plans to make Alice avaliable on Linux systems? I am a Linux supporter and use Windows mostly for Alice and Digital Music stuff. I would appriciate a Linux-Compatible version to make sure no one is left out.

That's an excellent question. While there's always a possibility that we can provide a way to get Alice v2.0 models into Alice v3.0, it's not currently a priority.

Alice v3.0 models will be "skinned," and will therefore avoid the ugliness you currently see, for example, around a character's shoulder when his/her arm is moved. It's not exactly clear how easy it would be to obtain that kind of skinning via an automated conversation of 3d models that were not designed with skinning in mind.

I've been playing around with the He-builder lately, and I've found that it is quite challenging to create my own custom characters with it (because 1) I have a vast sense of creativity and imagination, and that's not me bragging... that's fact. And 2) I have no other programs I can use to build people that are Alice-compatible). My personal favorite is one guy I made where I stuck him and a dragon into the same world, and then took almost everything off the dragon and placed it in appropriate areas on the guy (sort of like a half-dragon guy or perhaps even an anthrodragon).

So here's another question... are you planning on putting a He (or She)-Builder back into Alice 3.0, and if so, about how comprehensive will the interface be?